


What Lies Beneath Your Mind

by Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492



Series: Access Animus...Begin Regression [10]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Bleeding Effect, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 16:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11786625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492/pseuds/Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492
Summary: Based on the prompt that the Assassins/Templars go through the Bleeding Effect in their own way when their descendant is placed in an Animus.





	What Lies Beneath Your Mind

All at once, he feels him in his bloodstream, in his veins, in his mind.

It's sudden; enough to make him jolt upright, his rough Assassin clothes clammy on his flushed skin. Heart radically pounding, his eyes adjust to the darkness surrounding him, the cool night air of the desert hitting his skin. The sound of Maria pausing in sharpening her blade is just a soothing reminder that it was, in fact, just a dream.

It was just a dream.

But it feels like so much more.

Not a vision; it isn't the future. It isn't events, it isn't a warning of things to come. Too deep to be a dream, too uncertain to be the future, too tranquil to be a nightmare. Yet he knows that he is not alonw in this. Where he has one, Maria has three, and they are not the first to be like this according to Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. According to the hushed voices that in another brotherhood closer east there is one like them as well.

Someone that holds a connection-

Maria is there, her warm presence at his side almost instantly. "Was it the dream again?" He doesn't have to say but he does anyway. They have a bond together. A connection that has surpassed that of a mentor and her novice.

He pushes back against the hard cot, unable to handle laying down any further. Pacing around the small desert area that they have claimed for the night, he can only make a few strides before having to turn. Maria waits, patient and unwavering. He envied that about her; ever since he laid eyes on her collected and stoic features. Even if there was emotion deep within the frame that was an Assassin who-by the oaths they all make-is sworn to the Creed. Tightening the muscles of his jaw, he turns to face her again.

"It's not a dream. You know that. You see them too, Maria."

There's a shift in her eyes, so slight that most people would miss it, but Aguilar isn't most people to Maria. He knows that she feels the same thing that he does. That occasionally there are two others lingering in her mind. Though he never ask what she sees in her dreams. What she feels.

"You know it's not a dream. Tell me what it is. Tell me what the...feeling is that you experience." He wishes that her words didn't sound correct. Laced behind the tone she used when she was acting as his mentor. Because Aguilars does not wish for it to be more than just a dream.

Maria blinks before drawing to her feet and Aguilar knows this conversation has been over since the second it started. "You know that I go through the same thing. That there are differences for me. So tell me-Aguilar-trust me."

"It feels like worry-a lot of worry-that makes me feel defensless. There are bright lights too and then I see him." Aguilar chokes up on his own words. Feeling his own worry build up, yet what had been before felt just like him too. Burning away at the back of his neck until he told his hood from his neck at a hope for it to stop.

Those vivid blue eyes that can only belong to Maria appear in front of him with a glint of worry hidden in them. She places her hand against his cheek, ring finger missing just the same as his own, drawing him away from whatever it is.

"I see her-she looks just like me-the other does to though she is much younger. There is a young man too. He has my eyes as well. It hurts. To feel whatever it is, but perhaps that is the price we must pay." The worlds curl into a broken sound. As if the master assassin had just been punched in the stomach. "The price that Assassins and Templars must pay for their dealings with Pieces of Eden."

Part of him regrets this, this moment of weakness that they share together in the darkness of isolation. Moments that can only compare to when they have small moments of relaxation in a mission, hidden touches in her archive chambers, and more intimate moments in her room. Though those moments always burn in comparission to the intense feelings that rip away at his mind. What comes with it will be unspeakable levels of pain; Aguilar can sense this and it holds him back.

The Assassins. The Templars. The Apple of Eden. The Inquisition.

For everyone else, it seems to be so clear cut and vivid. Everything for the others is separate. There is no balance, no equal footing when looking upon the Templars tyranny. They don't need it either-he doesn't need it-though do Templars experience this? The presence of something that holds no exclamation?

After Maria goes to lay down, he can't sleep. Walking is something he's grown familiar with; his entire childhood was an eternity to walk for miles across the blazing hot desert sand. Though the Assassins were nomadic, and his parents were no different. His feet have permanent calluses from years of friction, which as an adult, has it's advantages. Underfoot, the rocks and sharp pebbles hardly faze him as he moves around the perimeter of their campsite.

Grey clouds cut across the sun which is just beginning to touch the horizon with its golden hands. Sunrise has always been Aguilar's favourite time of day. To him, it's a start, a beginning of something, unsoiled by the negativity that encompassed his life after the death of his wife, then his parents and what had remained of his family.

Though now he had Maria- his mentor in the Brotherhood, the mother of his daughter, the woman that he would have settled down with if they had been born in another time.

Swinging his legs over the fallen tree, his hands plant on either side of him, fingers grazing the patterns the wind and sands have etched into the wood ledge. Rolling his shoulders to release the tension between them, he closes his eyes and breathes.

In and out.

In and out.

His chest rises and falls in a synchronised pattern. Moments like this, when it's silent with nothing but the sound of the ground beneath his boots and the occasional caress of the wind on his face are when he really feels the peace he so desperately searches for.

'Aguilar. These are your first steps to becoming an Assassin. To letting go of your rage for revenge'

The words replay, over and over, in Maria's collected tone as she gives him the chance that Bennidicto never did.

Then another voice rises up, flowing against Maria's although the language comes from a foreign tongue.

'What happened in there-it felt real.'

He doesn't know who whispers that into his mind but it latches on at once. Tugging against the edges of his mind until the voice becomes more clear and the words bend into something he understands. Though the questions still remain because Aguilars doesn't know what it is. Or what had felt real. What could even possibly be real for it.

Maria had warned him about surrendering to it, she warned him about completely letting it envelop him. There is too much room for letting whatever it is completely in, yet when he does that all he does is remember.

But now, as he sits alone, he just wants to listen to his surroundings and the sounds that roll in like a slow tide in the back of his mind. Letting it wash over him like the tide and this time, have it reach out to him. He is aware of the dangers of it. Of giving into the unknown that lurks with whatever this is, because with the few records that exist it follows until death and Aguilar is tired.

Aguilar is tired. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually. He wants to sleep, sleep for hours and not be lost inside the maze in his mind.

A night desperate to sleep, Maria had warned of this. Once she saw the signs that had begun earlier in her own life.

  
A pain, a flash, suddenly overcomes him and his eyes fly open. The sun is completely covered by the grey clouds; time has passed. Aguilar doesn't know how much until he sees Maria approaching with horses. Horses that must have taken her four hours to aquire.

By the time that she reaches him the feeling finally subsides, but judging by her facial expression her own has returned.

"Is the Sultan ready?" The confirmation is in a quick nod. The Sultan of Granada knows what he must do for the sake of the Apple. For the sake of which side will survive the Inquisition.

"His son will be ready for us to move into the village. From then-we protect him for the sake of the Creed." Maria hands him his own horse before getting into her own. An expression unknown to him flashing across her face before it disappears. "Let us hope that this all ends."

Aguilar agrees though a part of him-a part that he isn't sure is actually his-nags at his mind.

He gives a prayer to whatever lurks within him that Maria survives this. That they both do.


End file.
